and passable for the horses, although partly over mudflats which during
high tides are covered with water; and on that account I thought, having
observed the country to be very low from the masthead, it would be
impassable.

I accompanied Mr. Bourne, Mr. Hennie the botanist, and two native
police-troopers to the eastward in search of water. In that direction we
went about six miles, which was further than was necessary as we found
water within that distance. The first three miles we went was chiefly
over hard flats which at high tides are covered with water; the next was
over such good country that Mr. Bourne, although I had given him my
account of the Plains of Promise, said he did not expect to have seen
such fine country on the Albert River. The character of the country is
plains with the best grasses on them. Mr. Bourne and I agreed in thinking
that the lowest of them (with the exception of there being on them no
cotton and cabbage saltbush) resembled in appearance, and from their
having salty herbage in abundance, some parts of the Murrumbidgee plains.
The higher parts are more thickly grassed and are slightly wooded with
stunted timber, consisting of box, apple, white-gum, cotton, and other
trees. The cotton-trees I had never seen before; but Mr. Hennie told me
they had been found by Dr. Mueller when in Mr. Gregory's party in the
expedition to Northern Australia.

On this country we found abundance of waterholes, some of which were
divided from each other by sandstone dykes and contained fresh, and
others brackish, water. Near the waterholes, at the most conspicuous
points of timber on our route, we marked trees. The north-easterly
waterhole I called Mueller Lake. It is a fine long sheet of water which
is brackish but not to an extent to render it undrinkable.